Saturday, December 06, 2008

Contest: Tales from the Captcha.

Lately, I've been noticing a change in the captcha puzzles blogger throws up to try to weed you, my dear and sweet human readers – the very cream of the species – from the hordes of soulless auto-posting robo-spammers who would, if they had their druthers, turn my comments section into a wasteland of ads for knock-off watches, miracle weight loss teas, and promises of penile enlargement. It seems to me that the captcha puzzles have been, for lack of a better term, have been "approaching wordness."

A minor qualitative change in the randomized results of an automated spam blocker – what better reason to throw a ANTSS contest!

So here's the contest:

Leave a comment in this story. In the comment, leave the captcha "word" that blogger gives you, give us directions on how to pronounce this new word, and give us a definition. Finally, use it in a sentence.

Here's an example:

"Lects" – pronounced like "flecks" without the "F" – the verb for what a lector does. "When Pastor Bob is lector, he really lects the crap out of that Gospel."

First place winner will get the season 1 DVD collection of HBO's long-gone, but not forgotten, horror series Tales of the Crypt. Original case, all 6 original episodes, all yours. Free, for nuffin', I'll even swing postage for you.

Second place winner gets Eric Powell and Kyle Hotz's horror/actioner comic Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities. I reviewed it here in this very Web log you are currently reading. And I even liked it.

Third place winner gets The Cobbler's Monster - a graphic novel that fuses Frankenstein with Pinocchio. It's an Image title from the legal-firm-sounding team of Amano, Rousseau, Faucher, and Brusco. A nifty little prize for any Frankophile or anybody who digs seeing their innocent childhood memories turned all psycho and bloody.

Fourth place winners and and other also-rans get the solemn pride that comes only from taking part in a mighty contest of wits and knowing, even though you strove boldly into battle, the entire Internet is laughing at you.

'Cause I got to ship this stuff, I'm afraid I've got to limit this thing to readers in the U. S. of A. It ain't a jingoistic thing; it's a money thing. My apologies to any international readers.

"After a slumber of countless millenia, the undersea nuclear test finally managed to rouse the great Bulaqu. Groggy, irritated and irradiated, it began its ascent to the surface to seek out whatever - or whoever - had dared to disturb its sleep."

I'm afraid I can't provide a pronunciation for Bulaqu; it pre-dates recorded human history and there is no written record of how to say the name. There are only a few vague references to it in some obscure book of Quebecois folklore, where it is simply referred to as "Le mal créature qui ressemble à un Anglais" which I'm told translates to "The beast which must not be named."

Definition: The minutiae remaining upon distilling one's own alcoholic beverage in randomly found bodies of water.

Sentence: I was going to whip up some moonshine in a local sewer drain, but the pre-existing gindedgu pointed to the fact another had beaten me to this location.

Comment: (I'm all into the headings and whatnot) Did you happen to procure your copy of The Cobbler's Monster at Forbidden Planet in Greenwich Village? If so, they are nation-wide suppliers of this particular title, as that's where mine came from too...

cryst: pronounced either /CRYst/ or /crist/, in that way that confuses everybody who's trying to pronounce the word correctly but aren't given a firm option in the dictionary.

Definition: a cryst is a walled-off sack of gaseous, liquid, semisolid, or solid material that is also the offspring of God, and thus an awkward choice of messiah for many people; often found on the nether regions and other embarrassing locations of the body.

"The three wise men came up to Joseph and said they had seen a sign that the baby Christ was born and so they all came from far away to reverently gaze upon it, whereupon Joseph looked at the men and said, "You want to look at my wife's cryst?, and the wise men, "Oh, yes! We really do!", and then Joseph proceeded to beat the living crap out of the three of them."

About Me

I have no pets. I own several ties, but rarely have a reason to wear any of them. I sing in the shower but can never remember the words, so I make them up as I go along, and they always end up being songs about showering. I collect slang dictionaries.